The Element of Being Less Self Centered and Its Hope for Seeing Things in the Correct Light

Several years ago, I was invited to one of Tanita’s friend’s houses for a middle school graduation party.  

The hosts were a mixed family, in which a white American lady had married into a traditional Indian family.

At the party, there were lots of traditional Indian women, busy at work in an open kitchen.

Some were kneading dough for chappathis, others were rolling them out, and a third set were frying these chappathis on the stove.  The man of the house saw me standing around and said, “What are you doing, eh? Help with the chappathis, eh.”  I felt humiliated to be ordered by him to help, and I have never made chappathis, so I also felt like a fool, but I tried to help out for about 10 minutes or so.

I then joined a group of 4 or 5 people who were seated around a table in the backyard. They were white, and were obviously part of the extended family of the hostess. 

The people at the table knew each other and talked among themselves.  They never addressed me, or tried to include me in the conversation. I felt awkward and uncomfortable. As soon as it was convenient to and I could excuse myself from the party, I said thank you to the hostess and went home.

The next day, my friend Nadya called me.  During the conversation, I remembered my experience at the party and decided to tell her about it.

I said, “My goodness, Nadya- I went to this party yesterday, and it was awful. First the man of the house tried to rope me in to make an Indian bread called chappathis with his relatives who spoke only Hindi. In fact, he criticized me when he saw me standing around, and told me I should help out, so I tried to help out, though I do not know how to make this bread and I could not communicate with any of the other ladies.”

I continued, “Then I sat at a table with these people and they never talked to me at all.”

I continued, “I think it was because I was Indian. They thought I had nothing in common with them and there was nothing they could talk to me about. So they ignored me.”

I continued, “All those other ladies were traditional Indian ladies, you know, housewives who have never worked outside the house.  Most of them don’t know English. So I think the people I was seated with thought I did not know English.”

Before I could go any further, Nadya stopped me.

She said, “Maybe, the people you were seated with were not thinking about you at all.  They were just involved with their own conversation. I know you felt uncomfortable, but my guess is they were not thinking about you at all.”

Hmm…. “Maybe they were not thinking about me at all”.  I had not considered this possibility.

Indeed, when I thought about it, they hardly looked my way.

I had felt out of place at the party, and based on the fact of my discomfort, I had tried to find answers in the fact I was Indian, and there were these other Indian ladies there who didn’t know English.

But, as Nadya said, most likely the people at my table “were not thinking about me at all.”

I have replayed Nadya’s words many times since that party.

Every time, a social situation leaves me feeling unwanted, or dejected, or left out, I remind myself not to take it personally.  I say, “Minoo, remember, they are as preoccupied and self-centered as you are, and are not thinking about you at all. Whatever is happening is not deliberate and it is not intentional.”

It’s when we think people are thinking about us, that we can misinterpret everything they say or do, or everything they don’t say or don’t do, and decide it is targeted at us.

Take this scenario.

Someone publishes a photo of themselves on Facebook.

Several people comment on the photo; we are one of those who comment on the photo.

A little while later, we notice that the person who published the photo has written a few words to each one, acknowledging their comments.

We look for the acknowledgement of our own comment, but for whatever reason (probably an accidental oversight), it’s not there.

The person who published the photo might have made a genuine slip and forgotten to reply to our comment, but does that thought enter our head?

No…..

Because we are the “only one” whose comment was not acknowledged, we take it personally and our mind immediately begins concocting stories.

“She must be angry with me”, we think.

“Or maybe she doesn’t like me.” “I don’t understand what she would have against me, though.”

We start trying to remember every interaction we have had with this person, recently or in the past, to figure out where things might have gone wrong.

We are filled with doubt and start speculating. 
  
“Could she have got upset with me because I said, “nice car?” Did she think I was being sarcastic?”

“Did someone say something to her about me and turn her against me?”

Soon we have created a whole lot of scenarios worthy of a Desperate Housewives plot.

We have turned a simple oversight into a full-scale drama.

A drama in which there are heroes and villains, us being the hero of course.

The villain’s mistake will not be easily forgotten.

We might harbor a grudge for that unacknowledged comment for years and years. 

How ridiculous is this!

We should stop ourselves and do a reality check.

We should ask ourselves – what could this person gain from making us feel bad?

Isn’t she busy enough with her own concerns and her own life, and doesn’t she have better things to do than to make us feel bad?

It was a plain oversight. Clear and simple. Nothing nefarious was involved.

Whenever we are tempted to think an issue has something to do with us (which is called projection), we should remember my friend Nadya’s admonition “They are not thinking about you at all.”

“It's all in the mind.” said George Harrison.

It’s true.

Depending on how self-centered we are, or how narrow our view of the world is, and how suspicious we are of people, we can easily get the wrong idea about things.

We can create false pictures of the world.

In our false pictures of the world, everything that people say or do comes under suspicion.

If our dog gets sick, our minds immediately jump to the fact that a stranger gave our dog a dog treat in the dog park when we were out walking the dog the other day. Was it stale, was it laced with something?

If our door key sticks in the lock when we get home from work, our mind leaps to the idea that someone may have been at our house and tried to jimmy the lock. A fleeting nasty thought about one of our neighbors crosses our mind.

Some people are superstitious and will even ascribe the misfortunes that happen to them to the presence of someone in their lives.

Our self-centeredness creates an unnecessary wall between ourselves and other people.

It makes us untrusting of other people.

We develop theories at the drop of a hat.

“Why did she say that?”  “Why did she do that?”

We get so caught up in our own ideas, we think they are the golden truth.

For example, there was this girl in my apartment, who though I knew her family and had even been over to her house, typically did not say hi to me, or smile, when I crossed her path.

In the beginning, I used to be caught up with my own ideas as to why this was the case.

My mind would be going all over the place, “Something about me obviously puts her off. She appears to be so pissed when she sees me.”

This was uncharitable of me – because she has a disability and walks with a crutch. In fact, it took her a long time just to get from her apartment to the car to go to college.

But every time I ran into her and she did not smile or acknowledge me, the same thoughts would run in my head all over again.

Until one day, it dawned on me her behavior might have nothing to do with me.

Maybe, she was in pain and never said hi to anybody.” What Nadya said to me came back to me “Maybe she is not thinking about me at all.”

It was a relief to experience this change in thinking.

“Humans see what they want to see.” said Rick Riordan.

As the example I just gave you illustrates, depending on our frame of mind, we can see a person in pain, or we can see a slight.

If we interpret everything that happens as something that has a bearing on our image and our well-being, we will be easily upset.

Someone may come and talk to a coworker at the cube next to us, but not stop and say hi to us.

It immediately becomes cause to take offense and we will start projecting, “I wonder why. Is it because…..” We start trying to fill in the blanks and we concoct some stories.

It is very easy to find evidence for our concocted stories.

For instance, a manager may praise someone’s work in front of us. By habit, we may instantly start thinking back on all the different interactions between this person and us, the manager and this person, or the manager and us, and then start concocting our stories.

We will concoct all sorts of scenarios to support the idea that the manager is playing favorites, or the person who was praised is doing something underhand.

Whereas all it is, in fact, is that someone’s work was praised, and that someone was not us and we are upset.  

This is how being self centered can lead us down a rabbit hole and turn us against innocent people and innocent situations.

We must be careful not to let our world-view and the dominant concerns in our life cloud our judgment about reality.

Personal interpretations, if they give rise to joy and wonder, serve us well.

Since learning to meditate in late 2010, I have started believing in telepathy. I have had several experiences which I believe to have been telepathic experiences. It fills me with joy and wonder to think I am in tune with other human beings and I can have telepathic experiences with them.

This is an example of a personal interpretation which has a positive effect and increases our joy.

However, if our personal interpretations increase our fears and anxieties, and cause us to distrust other people’s intentions, they definitely do not serve us well.

In fact, they do us a disservice.

The sooner we drop our self-centered reactions to things, the better our lives will be.

We will learn to relax and not look for slights, we will have trusting relationships with people and less misunderstandings.

We will see that most things are not deliberate or intentional.

When we stop interpreting other people’s behavior in terms of how it impacts us, we will be more fun to be around, and no one will need to walk on eggshells when they are with us.

We will go from taking offense and being defensive, to being magnanimous and trusting and open, and seeing the big picture in life.  And what could be better than that?

I will end with these lines from Bertrand Russell:

“These illustrations suggest four general maxims…
The first is: remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself.
The second is: don't over-estimate your own merits.
The third is: don't expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself.
And the fourth is: don't imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any special desire to persecute you.”

As always thanks for reading and have a great day and week….M...a Pearl-Seeker like you.  Thanks to Ajay and Rosie for their comments on Facebook, and thanks to everyone else for their votes.

The Element of Doing the Things We Don’t Have to Do and Its Hope for Leading a More Fulfilling Life

Recently I read the book Decide by Steve McClatchy.

In this book, he makes a distinction between the things we “have to do” and the things we “don’t have to do”.

The things we “have to do” are those we do out of necessity.

Things such as paying our credit card on time.

If we don’t pay our credit card on time, we will have to pay the piper, namely shell out for exorbitant interest charges.

Likewise, if we don’t pay our rent or mortgage on time……it may be hello bailiff! hello living in our car.

We anxiously rush to do things we have to do, because if we don’t do them, we will suffer consequences.

Cleaning our houses, washing the dishes, mowing our lawns, are all things we “have to do” or pay the consequences. If we let enough time pass, then all sorts of things can happen, as maybe…

(Knock Knock, who’s there?  Hoarders.  Hoarders Who?  Hoarders, the TV show….. are you interested in being on our show?)

Thank heavens life is not only about dirty dishes and things we “have to do”.

It’s also about the poems we want to write, the pictures we want to paint, the songs we want to sing, the new things we want to learn, the places we want to visit, the books we want to read, the things we want to accomplish, the good we want to do in the world - the things we “don’t have to do”, but we want to do - for our own growth, for our own fulfillment, for our own satisfaction.

These are the things McClatchy says, which make life meaningful and satisfying and worthwhile.

Poetry – because we want to do it

My mother lived for her poetry. Even in her worst moments, she was able to find life meaningful and satisfying and worthwhile by writing poetry.

She wrote when she was happy.  She wrote when she was sad.  She wrote when she was healthy.  She wrote when she was sick.  She wrote when there was a special occasion.  She wrote when there was no occasion at all.

My mother never “had to write” poetry. Poetry was not her career and she made no money from her poetry.

But writing was an impulse for Mummy.

It was something she just did, something she liked to do, something she felt compelled to do, something she was born to do, something which sustained her, something she enjoyed doing till the very end of her life.

Here’s one of Mummy’s poems:

Come Live With Me

Come live with me and be my love

I do not yearn for diamond roof

Or golden rings

Or food of royal savour

Or words so grand

But steady companionship

And enlightenment of things

Bold company and warm night air

Moist lips much given to song

Or serenading laugh

Cool summers and full voiced days

And happy fleeting of the merry ways

Poetry is one of those things which needs no justification, no explanation, no reason.

What are the things in your life, which like my mother’s poetry, needs no justification, no explanation and no reason?

Doing more than what is expected of us

In Decide, McClatchy tells of how he was an average student in college, but he was involved in a lot of different on-campus and off-campus activities, including the Big Brother program.

Based on these extracurricular activities, he was asked to give the Valedictorian speech at the graduation ceremony.

He was surprised the honor did not go to the student with the highest grades.

Later, he thought about it and he figured it out.  Those with the highest grades were just doing what was expected of them in life, nothing more….whereas by all his other activities, he had demonstrated he was the kind of person who would do more in life than what was expected of him.

McClatchy got me thinking about all the things I do, which I don’t have to do and the reasons I do them…..

Watching Desperate Housewives

One of them is watching Desperate Housewives with Tanita.  I like Desperate Housewives, but I do not like it enough to watch it on my own.  Yet when Tanita says, “Mum, come watch Desperate Housewives with me”, I drop whatever I am doing (such as getting this blog post ready, or playing Merriam Webster Scrabble Online) and I sit alongside Tanita to watch the antics of Susan, Lynette, Gaby and Brie with her.

Watching Desperate Housewives is something I don’t have to do, but I do it because it makes Tanita happy, and it has become a bonding experience for both of us.

Indeed, some of our most satisfying activities may be the ones we do, not for ourselves, but for someone we love. When we put the interests, wishes and desires of someone we love before our own interests, it can be a joy in itself.

What are the things you can do to strengthen the bonds between you and someone you care for?

Doing What We Love

Then there are all those activities that we don’t have to do, but we do, either because we have a special talent for them, or we have a special fascination for them.

We don’t have to be cajoled to do these activities.  They are what we love to do.

I think of my friend Nadya assembling a gadget.

Or my friend Patty in her garden.

Or my friend Julia working on one of her art projects.

Or my friend Krysia trying out a new recipe.

Or my friend Ajay working on his novel, or writing one of his guest-posts.

Or me reading a book, or writing my blog.

Helping Others

Audrey Hepburn said, “As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.”

McClatchy tells us that being a Big Brother was one of his most satisfying experiences.

Helping others is something we never “have to do”.

But we experience a meaningful sense of accomplishment when we help others.

I know I get a kick out of helping people do their taxes, or teaching someone what I know about money.

I created and presented a Money Workshop at my daughter’s elementary school to pass on my knowledge about Earning Money, Saving Money and Investing Money, and it was one of the best things I ever did.

Also, one of the things I now do as a Commissions Consultant, is serve as an Transition Commissions Analyst. I help companies administer commissions on a stop gap basis, and I then do a KT (knowledge transfer) to the permanent analyst who comes on board and takes over from me.  This “grooming of someone else to take over from me” has turned out to be one of the most rewarding aspects of being a Commissions Consultant, and I have made many new friends by doing this.

What are the things you can do to help others?

Conquering a Fear

Sometimes we do something we “don’t have to do” to conquer a fear.

Some years ago, I joined Toastmasters.

I “didn’t have to” join Toastmasters.

Public speaking is not a required skill for a Commissions Analyst, or an SPM Consultant.

Our jobs are behind a desk, crunching numbers, or entering and calculating data in Excel, Centive, Xactly, Callidus or Varicent.

But I joined Toastmasters to conquer a fear.

It was a fear that would raise its ugly head, every time I had to speak up in a room full of people.

By joining Toastmasters and completing my 10 CTM speeches, I came to grips with this fear. In fact, I picked up enough courage to enter and win a contest, taking home a trophy for a speech I gave about a foolish stock market mistake I made.

Is there a fear you would like to conquer?  Can you find a “Toastmasters” solution to that fear, so it does not hold you back  from the things you want to do?

Getting a Grip on Things

When I moved to America, I did not know how to drive.

I could have relied on public transport, but it would have severely limited my opportunities, severely hampered my freedom, and severely impacted my time.

So I am glad I kept at driving, in spite of failing my first written test and my first behind the wheel test.

When I moved to America, I also did not know how to cook.

I could have managed with TV dinners and eating fast food without breaking the bank.

But this would have made my diet very unhealthy.

So I am glad I came to grips with cooking.

It is because I do my own cooking, I can make sure to eat healthy.

Are there areas of your life you feel you should get a grip on?

Improving Our Relationships

I used to be a Tiger Mom.  Then I became a Helicopter Mom.  Tiger Mom and Helicopter Mom were clueless and ineffective.  So Hippie Mom was born. You can read all about it in my post It’s Called Motherhood 2.

I didn’t have to give up being Tiger Mom.

I didn’t have to give up being Helicopter Mom.

In fact, I was quite invested in them.

But wanting to be “in control” of everything was only turning my daughter away from me.

It was only when I became Hippie Mom, I became the parent Dr. John Duffy advises us all to be in the best book I’ve read on parenting by far, “The Available Parent”.  

It’s the Dr. Spock for parenting teens.

I now have a wonderful relationship with my daughter.

If you want to know whether you are an available parent, in the sense Dr. Duffy means, a simple test would be to see if you can tolerate and accept the things Hippie Mom learned to accept and tolerate.

Of course, each child is unique, and if you want to know what you need to learn and accept about your child, you will have to look into your own heart. I am sure you will find the answer there.

Becoming More Knowledgeable

Sometimes we do something we don’t have to do to become more knowledgeable.

This is why we might work on our own cars, even if we have all the money in the world.

I used to go to H&R Block to do my taxes every year.

I did not understand anything about taxes, so I would have to put myself in the hands of the tax preparer assigned to me.

But in 2004, I decided to become knowledgeable about taxes.

It was not that difficult and I found all the information I needed on the internet.

I was able to do my taxes myself on Turbo Tax that year, and I have never looked back.

What could you benefit from becoming more knowledgeable about?

Supporting An Activity We Don’t Care For

When Tanita was around 6 or 7, she asked our neighbor Valarie if she could go to church with her.

This was the beginning of a cherished friendship between Valarie’s family and ours. You can read all about in my post The United States of Friendship Part 6.

Tanita became very involved in church, and even joined the youth choir.

When Valarie became ill and home-bound, I took over the task.

I was still an atheist at the time.

But I would drop Tanita off to church before service and pick her up after.

Eventually, I would experience my own spiritual stirrings and start going into church with Tanita.

Today, when I think back, I am happy I supported Tanita’s desires to attend church, even though, I “didn’t have to” do it. As an atheist at the time, in my heart of hearts, I thought it was a waste of time.

But I am so glad I didn’t take my atheism so seriously, as to deny Tanita the support she needed.

Especially, since she was too young to drive herself to church.

We should respect the desires and wishes of our children, even if they go against our cherished beliefs and ideas.

Besides, we could have a change of heart about those very cherished beliefs and ideas.

I had a change of heart about several cherished beliefs and ideas, as I confess in my post The Element of Moving On and Its Hope for Discovering New Selves. 

Are there areas in your life in which you’ve been unfairly denying support to your child?

Becoming a Better Person

We are not perfect.

But we can all try to become better people.

I used to have anger issues.

In my posts The Path to Change and How Many Times A Day Do You Visit Ireland? I tell you about my struggles with that, and the decision I made to change.

In 2010, I learned to meditate.

My meditation has taken me further on the path to becoming a better person.

Of all our desires, becoming a better person should be top on our list.

And doing the things we have to do to get there, should also be top on our list.

Since I feel strongly about this, I will end this post with a question:

Do you want to become a better person? Yes? Then what are the things you can do, that you don’t have to do, which will get you there?

As always, thanks for reading and have a great day and week.  Thanks to Ajay for his comments on Facebook, thanks to all my Pinterest pinners, and thanks to everyone else for their votes….M ……a Pearl Seeker like you.